I have just submitted a claim for compensation for a delayed easyJet flight under EU Directive 261/2004. They have an online form which is pretty easy to fill in. I received an email reply within minutes telling me that I was entitled to compensation and it would be paid directly into my bank within 7 to 14 days. Fantastic.

Now the downside. Under EU 261/2004 I am entitled to €400 compensation. The amount they intend to pay into my bank is £219.43, i.e. an exchange rate of 1.82. Oh would that it were, would that it were. For bookings they are using an exchange rate of 1.1, i.e. if you select some flights to get a price and then change the currency. The exchange rate has never been as high as 1.82 since the Euro started. I have pointed this out to them and await a reply. If I don't get a satisfactory response I will lodge a complaint with the National Enforcement Body: Passenger Complaints Unit Civil Aviation Authority CAA House 45-59 Kingsway London WC2B 6TE Tel: +44 20 7453 6888 Fax: +44 20 7240 7071, E-mail: passengercomplaints at caa dot co dot uk.

While I was in the mood I also submitted a claim to Ryanair for a flight that was delayed just less than 2 years ago*. They also now have an online form which is pretty simple to fill in. I haven't had a reply from them yet but they claim 10 working days processing time at the moment.

I will report back with any news.

Warwick

* I didn't lodge a claim with Ryanair earlier because I expected the process to be difficult and I didn't have the energy to chase through their system. It certainly isn't difficult now and so well worth doing if you suffer a delay of over 3 hours.

When I complained about the amount easyJet were intending to pay I offered to supply them with account details for a Euro account so that they could pay the full €400 without converting to Sterling. I got another email from easyJet about a week ago saying that they would make the payment in Euro, without specifying the amount, and asking for the account details, which I supplied. So far no payment.

I got a reply from Ryanair the day after I submitted my claim simply acknowledging it. They say they will respond within 28 working days, so almost 6 weeks from the claim.

Yesterday I received a cheque from Ryanair for €400 as promised. The cheque was dated 9 working days after their letter, which is within the 10 working days quoted. Obviously I have no idea if it was posted within the 10 working days but if it was it took 10 days to get to Crete, which seems a little long but not impossible. Altogether it has taken 45 days from submitting the claim to receiving the cheque and no action, other than completing the simple online form, has been required by me.

So far I have received no payment from easyJet. On 3 July they sent me an email saying it would be paid into my account within 14 days, not working days. I contacted them on the fifteenth day but so far I have had no reply. I have also had to send several emails to resolve issues with how they are handling the claim. In 2013 Which? did a survey of the customer service provided by 100 large companies. Ryanair came last. On the issue of EU261 compensation easyJet have excelled themselves by providing worse customer service than Ryanair.

Well done Warwick, so the drinks are on you ....I claimed 3 years ago from RyanAir for a delayed flight of 3or 4 hours and got £300 That was not an easy process so they must have improved the system , many emails, filling in the online form that then hid itself many times , some where on the website , and a letter describing the evening... And you never got to communicate with the same person twice ... I bet most people didn't bother...I was encouraged by some people I got delayed with ...we pooled our free 15 euro meal and beer tokens and formed a cabal in the airport bar , two musicians from London, a couple who had been on a climbing trip in Crete and myself...we all got £300 ...result ...

The process now is pretty simple, especially if you are just claiming the €400 delay compensation. Both the easyJet and Ryanair forms are directly linked in my first post, although I am sure they will move them about from time to time so at some point it might be necessary to search for them again. The details they request are straight forward, assuming you still have your original booking reference, and you don't need to provide any evidence. If you want to claim compensation for some other expenses I presume it gets a bit more difficult as they will no doubt want proof that you actually incurred those expenses and they may challenge if they are justified or not.

With Ryanair I didn't need to do anything else at all. I received a couple of emails that didn't need a response and then the cheque by post.

Easyjet was only a bit more complicated because they offered a very low amount in Sterling that I rejected. They then asked for an account into which they could pay Euro. They then said they were going to pay a reasonable Sterling amount into the Euro account. They seem to be in chaos. Obviously each time I received an email I had to respond to it because each one contained yet another cock-up. None of this was difficult but it did involve more effort than the Ryanair claim.

I think anybody who suffers a delay and doesn't submit a claim now is crazy. I am sure it was more difficult in the past, especially when budget airlines were trying to classify everything as "exceptional". Now that the terrible and hated ECJ has ruled that they can't use these exceptions it seems to have become more routine. €400 for ten minutes work must be the best rate of pay I have ever received. Even easyJet has taken a lot less than 1 hour of my time so still a good rate.

Overall it has been a good week so far as I was also informed by the tax office that I was due an €800 rebate for tax overpaid in 2017. Admittedly it is just getting back my own money that I had already paid them but better than not getting it back. On the down side it looks like they are going to demand Apostille stamps and Greek translations for documents proving income my late wife received in 2012, the year she died. Getting them should be fun and probably cost me a big chunk of the rebate. It seems strange that people on the Lagarde list, some of whom potentially cheated the Greek government out of millions in tax, cannot now be investigated, because it would be "unconstitutional" to go back more than 5 years, but they can demand documents from me from six years ago. Funny old world. I wonder if any of the judges who made the ruling were on the list?

We two were delayed 3 hrs and 2 minutes returning by Easyjet to Gatwick on April 26th. It was clearly entirely Easyjet's fault (no air traffic control restrictions or weather issues). We filled in the claim form online. We had to chase (by phone) when no response came by the promised time.

Result: £699 paid into our UK account. A lot more than the tickets cost...

I thought it was too good to be true. This morning I tried to pay the Ryanair cheque into my Alpha Bank account. They refused to accept it as they said it was impossible for them to cash cheques drawn on an Irish bank. This was a general problem, nothing to do with Ryanair. I then took it to the Cooperative Bank of Chania, where I also have an account. They accepted it and said it would take about 20 working days to clear. Fingers crossed but I am a bit suspicious that when it comes to the end of August I will get told that the cheque failed to cash. The lady in the Alpha Bank said they deliberately send cheques first and then make a transfer when the cheque fails because it slows down payment and so aids their cash flow. While that may be true for some unscrupulous companies I can't imagine for one minute that a fine upstanding company like Ryanair would try such a trick.

I also spent a jolly morning in the tax office updating my passport information and trying to inform them of my bank details so they could refund my overpayment. After about 3 hours I was told that they wouldn't actually refund the money to my bank but rather deduct it from back tax I owe from 2012 so they didn't need my bank details. Oh joy.

Warwick

PS The back tax owed is not my fault but due to late IKA pension payment and the tax office doing stupid audits on my lat wife who died in 2012.

Yes, delay is determined by the difference between actual landing time and scheduled landing time. When you take off is irrelevant. The flight I claimed for was 3hrs30mins late taking off but made up some time so was 3hrs10mins late when it landed. It was the 3hrs10mins that determined that I was entitled to compensation, which I have still not received and still no reply to my last 3 emails.

Update. The Ryanair cheque cashed!! I checked with the bank yesterday and the €397, €400 minus the €3 bank fee, is now available in my account. I was quite surprised as there was a news item after I had deposited the cheque saying that Ryanair had accidentally issued a large number of compensation cheques without signatures and they had all bounced. I hadn't checked the one I deposited so I expected it to be one of that batch. Fortunately it wasn't.

I have still not received payment from Easyjet. I received another email on 27 August 2018 saying that they would be paying €400 into the account whose details I provided on 14 June 2018. They claim I should receive it within 14 days. It's now almost 13 weeks since I made the original claim. I had submitted a complaint to CEDR, the resolution body Easyjet are signed up to, but they had not processed the claim yet so Easyjet's new email wasn't as a result of the complaint. I have told CEDR to hold the complaint and I will inform them in 14 days if I have received the payment or not. If not they can revive it.

If anybody needs to make a complaint about Ryanair they are signed up to ADR.

Final update. The €400 from EasyJet cleared in my Greek bank account yesterday. Altogether it took 14 weeks from submitting the claim to receiving the payment and 6 emails from me to them. Not exactly hassle free but worth the effort for the money. Typically the compensation paid by Ryanair and EasyJet for 2 delayed flights covers the cost of 4 round trips to the UK, i.e. 8 flights. Free travel for suffering 2 delays out of 8 flights is almost worth it since I never have to be at a particular place at a particular time?

I've never understood why compensation for a relatively short delay is even as much as the cost of the delayed flight. It should work on the same principle as insurance; reimbursement of losses and necessary additional expenses. On a short haul flight delayed for a couple of hours you still reach your destination and, possibly, need a snack. If a connecting flight is missed and that involves extra cost that gets compensated along with any other expense incurred as a direct consequence of the delay. Compensation doesn't mean people should end up with a financial gain.

In the end, of course, in any industry all the compensation paid is recovered by companies in higher prices for whatever services or goods they provide. Before anyone asks, I've never suffered a delay long enough to come within the scope of compensation claims. If I did, would I claim? Yes, it would recover some of the extra I've paid for tickets to compensate previous claimants. Do I think people shouldn't claim? No, not while it's within the rules, but I think the rules should change.